AMD will start selling its entry-level Radeon RX 6500 XT gaming graphics card on Jan. 19. Its recommended price is $200. However, with the ongoing shortage of gas pedals, caused in part by cryptominers and resellers who are sweeping all available offers off the shelves, it has been impossible to find video cards at affordable prices for more than a year.
Whether the Radeon RX 6500 XT will be any different depends in part on the volume of its shipments, but AMD also claims to have designed this graphics gas pedal in a way that makes it look less appealing in the eyes of cryptocurrency miners. Talking to the press about the recent announcements at CES 2022, AMD Radeon VP Laura Smith explained how the Radeon RX 6500 XT was «optimized» for gamers. «We really optimized this gas pedal so that in the target market it is primarily a gaming accelerator. This is quite noticeable if you look at its specifications. Despite the fact that the card has only 4 GB of memory, this is quite enough for most AAA-class games. At the same time, the video card does not look attractive for those who plan to use the gas pedal for blockchain transactions or mining» & ; noted Smith. Indeed, if you look at the characteristics of the Radeon RX 6500 XT, it becomes clear that the card is different in the worst way, even against the background of the entry-level model Radeon RX 5500 XT last generation.
Firstly, the new gas pedal has only 4 GB of memory instead of 8 GB. Secondly, the memory bus bit width of Radeon RX 6500 XT is half the size of its predecessor (64 bits versus 128 bits). Such a bit width of memory bus can be found today except for budget discrete mobile video card level GeForce MX 450. However, the memory bit width of desktop graphics gas pedals of recent generations was at least 128 bits. The smaller memory size and reduced memory bandwidth will have a negative impact on the video card's performance in Ethereum mining. To compensate for the slow memory interface and to help the card to compete with offers of Radeon RX 570 and Radeon RX 5500 XT level, the manufacturer increased the frequency of the GPU Radeon RX 6500 XT. The maximum GPU frequency of the new gas pedal is 2815 MHz. For comparison, the chip of the Radeon RX 5500 XT runs at 1845 MHz. Whether such AMD technical solutions will help to win gamers' attention to Radeon RX 6500 XT and keep miners away from it, we will know after the sales start.
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